Slouching into Oblivion

The gas gauge was flirting with empty between Celaya and San Miguel, a deep-night high-speed run on a particularly dangerous highway, when I noticed the lighted PEMEX sign on my right side near a drug dealer holding a cardboard sign, “METH.” PEMEX is Mexico’s government-owned oil company, their gas stations littering the countryside, places where there are no fewer than a dozen ways to be ripped off, most of them involving diversion by the attendant. I noticed three tall, young girls with long legs and short skirts. As I pulled into one of the lanes, the prettiest of them knocked on my window. As I rolled it down, she reached in, touched my face, and said, “Hi, young man. We are the chiquitas,” motioning to her scantily-clad girlfriends. “Aren’t you cute?” Maybe I was tired, or maybe it was my perpetual emotional vulnerability, but I thought to myself, “Fuck it. If this is this week’s diversion, they can rip my ass a new one now.” “What’s your name?” she asked. She had wond...

I moved to Mexico 20 years ago for no good or apparent reason except to flee the world of shopping,  vacuous conversations and in your face lying about money and stuff, usually punctuated with hostility, greed, threats, envy, hubris, violence, inequality, stagnation, and the inescapable and predictable descent into authoritarian tyranny.  I spent most of those years practicing the dark trade of law, crossing the border the wrong way in the deep nights to make a buck so I could end up giving it away to wife number two, who I may sometimes refer to in these stories as “Plaintiff.”  Over the years, my world has gotten smaller, if only because I find most people everywhere self-important, willfully ignorant, repetitive, insincere, lacking curiosity, and still struggling to find meaning in a meaningless experience.   These scribblings are a part of an series of alcohol- and anger-fueled meanderings, complaints and convictions written over more than twenty years, some pu...

Hernando Cortes was an asshole. In 1519, Hernando landed with 11 ships and 600 men somewhere near Cancun before inclusive resorts littered the beach. He had one goal: steal. Hernando was the first CEO, but that is another story we will save for later. His first order to his men was to “burn the ships.” Naturally, his men thought he’d done too much PCP, which he was known to do along with yard-long lines of pure cocaine, to stay up all night and hallucinate about such nonsense as burning his own ships and opening hotels that offered free liquor. But his boys did it because they were, in two words, retarded and hungry, and after they off loaded the last of the rum and swilled it like the drunks they were, they burned their own transportation.Now some would say, “That’s fucked up.” And they would be right. In Cortes’ drug-addled, syphlliltic mind, he would conquer the Aztecs and use their ships to return to Spain after raping and pillaging an entire population. One probl...

I have never been to an ice cream social. I don’t know anyone who has ever been to an ice cream social. “In my driveway,” the invitation read. “We will enjoy ice cream.” And I knew I was screwed. And I was right. And wrong. I mean who the fuck would invite people over for ice cream during the most devastating pandemic since 1918. “Fuck ice cream,” I thought. “I’ll bring tequila.” And, I did. And so did others. And that was her point. Life is meaningful because of connections. Sometimes lubricated. Lonely people look for others, even as far away as next door. Her bet was we won’t give up our new connections after the ice cream. Except the ones the virus kills. They will be forgotten. The dead are always forgotten. I smiled knowingly and dumped my ice cream into the dog bowl and drew deep on a half- empty, probably virus-ridden, bottle of cheap Mezcal. I knew it was cheap. I brought it. And that’s the moment I could see it all clearly. I grabbed the black seal...

Failure Is Always An Option, Pablito October 21, 2021 “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for others.” - Charles Dickens Dickens knew. He earned 6 shillings a week gluing labels on pots of boot black in a warehouse full of rats before he became the greatest novelist and noted philanthropist of the Victorian era. I reflected on Dickens’ admonition when my girlfriend’s nephew, Pablito, a precocious 9-year old, came to me with a business idea. He was cautious, but excited.  His caution was understandable. He had heard my cruel sarcasm before and seen my disturbing abuse of inanimate objects when confronted with stupidity, ignorance, and lack of curiosity. “Jim, do you want to hear my idea?” His face an alternating combination of hope and dread. “Not really,” I replied, “but who knows, maybe you are the next Elon Musk, a visionary, liar, and hustler, an essential combination to be successful in today’s business world.” He paused. “Go ahead,” I...